Meeting minutes FESCo (2012-03-26)

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2012-04-04 at 08:25 +0200, David Tardon wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 03, 2012 at 11:23:04AM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > On Fri, 2012-03-30 at 14:29 +0200, David Tardon wrote:
> > > Or do we really need a policy/process/guideline for _everything_?
> > 
> > I tend to find it's a good idea. It has lots of benefits and virtually
> > no drawbacks, except that someone has to find time to write it.
> 
> And then everyone else has to read it and _remember_ it, which is IMHO
> the main drawback. And because some/many will not, we are no better off
> than before, except there is one policy more.
> 
> Note: I am not against policies in general, just against policies
> regarding trivial matters. I _would_ check packaging guidelines before
> submitting a new package for review. I _would not_ look at the current
> e-mail sending policy (if there was one) before sending an e-mail to
> fedora-devel. Actually, there is a good chance I would not even remember
> there _was_ any e-mail sending policy...

well, there's obviously a line somewhere.

but frankly this particular example is, to me, an absolutely _ideal_
candidate for an SOP.

I mean, look, what is it fesco wants? They want a rotating chair. Which
effectively means that a single, fairly rote task - announce a meeting
is going to happen, chair the meeting, send out minutes from the meeting
- is going to be done so infrequently by such a large group of people
that no single one of them is likely to do it often enough to actually
remember exactly how it's done each time. which is going to lead to
small or large variances in procedure and all sorts of inadvertent
mistakes. It's not like meetings where the same person does it every
week and could do it with their eyes shut and their hands strapped to
their chair. Not that I have any experience of such things. Ahem.

I can't really think of a situation _better_ suited to an SOP. I mean,
on top of the above, FESCo membership *changes* all the time. What
better way is there to explain to a new FESCo member how to chair the
meeting for the first time than 'go read the SOP which explains exactly
how to chair the meeting'?
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net